one year later

Here are some of the pictures I mentioned in the last post.

we went to the zoo

To celebrate Brian's birthday (yep, it's in May...yes, we are the world's greatest procrastinators), we went to the zoo on Saturday. The Sedgwick County Zoo, which is the 13th largest zoo in the country. We hadn't been there since with the Math Club my soph or jr year of college and a lot has changed since then. I was really excited to see all the new exhibits (new gorilla habitat, new chimp/orangutan habitat, new penguin exhibit), and I was not disappointed. First we watched an elephant demonstration that was quite impressive. I would love to have a few elephants. I love that they are a social species and so incredibly smart. Then, we wasted a bunch of time at the river otter demonstration because apparently they just canceled it and didn't bother to inform their waiting fans, and then we saw penguin feeding. The little Humboldt penguins are so cute and mighty fast under water. In between those demonstrations we saw the exhibits mentioned above, the reptiles/amphibians, the jungle, and the South America and Australia exhibits. I was tuckered out after our four-and-one-half hours there.

Also this weekend, we buckled down and spent all of Friday evening writing our wedding thank-yous. Like I said, world's greatest procrastinators. Put us together and trouble. So those of you thinking we are not grateful for your gifts, you just wait. We are! We always have been! We're just bad.

Yesterday, Brian's parents had us and my parents over for an anniversary celebration. They outdid themselves on a very nice meal, including homemade frozen custard, and we broke out the wedding cake they preserved for us. It's actually pretty tasty. We walked out to the pond, and I put Brian through some "one year later" pictures on the bridge, amongst the sunflowers, and under the willow where we were married. We wrapped up the evening by watching our wedding dvd (with much fast forwarding through the sermon...).

becoming mr. and mrs. smith

This weekend we were fortunate to be able to make the trip to Sioux Falls, S.D., to celebrate Kelley O'Reilly's marriage to Michael Smith. We left Friday evening, and Larry and Kathy generously let us stay at their house overnight. And even though they weren't there, they kept us well stocked with snacks! Such great hosts. Saturday morning we left for Sioux Falls, and I slept through the entire state of Iowa. Brian's always such a nice driver, and this trip I didn't even get behind the wheel! We arrived early enough to go poke around in the park where the wedding was supposed to be (it was moved to a church because of weather). The wedding was really nice and small; I liked the readings and what her dad had to say. The reception was at a swanky cafe downtown, where I thoroughly enjoyed the delicious hor 'devours, dinner, and cake. We got a great table with fun people. Bethel grads who I don't know all that well, so it was fun to spend a little more time with them (Dan Graber, Lacey Graber, Liz Rempel, Emily Smith Goering). Lots of laughs. We weren't able to join everyone at the bar after because we needed to get to Omaha where we were staying with my aunt and uncle, and we didn't want to arrive too late. I think my uncle might have already fallen asleep before we got there, but he was very gracious and a great host too. Sunday morning we left for home. (Sarah, we might have possibly driven through your town and not seen you. I was going to text you: Bake me some cookies--I'm coming to town, but Mark's phone screen was broken and he would have had to call you to get the number so we kept driving which was for the best because as it was we only got to see Mark for ten minutes and only got to do that because he skipped out on seeing grandma before he left.)

Whew, that was a big breath to get that all out. I failed and never got the camera out of the car, so I have no pictures of the blessed event. Also too bad since Kelley and Michael are moving to Ireland (he's from there...don't you think they should have taken HER name?), and I'll probably never see her again.

And for those of you interested in this kind of thing, our new little car gave us just over 40 mpg on our trip. Good car.

we're excited

Two weeks ago, we were able to replace our car. Brian did some excellent searching and negotiating work, and we got just what we wanted and we love it. It is pretty exciting to have a brand new car. I've never before purchased a car with miles on it in the hundreds, much less one below one hundred! Since we didn't order it from the factory, we didn't get to choose our color. Given that this was the only one on a lot in a 500 mile radius, we were happy to take whatever they had! We were both pleasantly surprised at the color when we pulled into the dealership. Even more so since it wasn't a color we would have picked purely based on the catalog. And I have been doing pretty well with the stick shift, if I do say so myself.

unexpected

Yesterday afternoon Adam Akers came into my office: "I have something for you." And what did it turn out to be, but this picture. From our freshman year. Found on the second floor of Goering Hall (for those not familiar, this is a dorm that hasn't been in use since our freshman year, which was nine years ago). Crazy.

sad update

Tiny little Toonces died on Sunday. :(

are you still talking about john mayer?

A byproduct of the funeral is that all of the cousins were here! Our family does get together pretty regularly, but cousins are spread out, so it's not too often that everyone is together (missing this time was only one in-law). I wouldn't say I know my cousins extremely well — especially some of them — but I do enjoy getting together with them. The evening after the funeral we had our first real cousin bonding time in the adult years. The two not-yet-21 cousins didn't come and a couple of the in-laws stayed behind with kids, but everyone else was there. It was a blast. We had a waitress who made things interesting, some interesting drinks were delivered to the table...like Mark's White Russian, which had a vodka : Kaluha : cream ratio of about 1:1:12...and also some very scientific discussions about the aluminum bottle. A lot of laughs. Good times.

All cousins.


Applebee's crew.